250 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



the buccal cavity is brought into relationship with the 

 cerebral vesicles. 



When this triple junction of structures and included 

 intra-spaces, becomes fully established, the shrinkage, and 

 involution of the notochord, begins, which seems to 

 mean, that the material, hitherto deflected along the 

 lumen of the notochord, becomes finally deflected, 

 through the anterior lobe of the now encapsuled pituitary 

 gland, into the buccal cavity, the direction which it is 

 destined permanently to take, as a means of keeping 

 open, a communication between the cavities of the brain 

 and alimentary canal, and, so of securing the drainage of 

 the skull, and its nervine contents, in perpetuity. 



Moreover, when such a disease as acromegaly ensues, 

 and when we look about for a reasonable etiology of such 

 an enigmatic condition, we are persuaded, we shall find it 

 in a perversion, of the " state of things," brought about by 

 the above-mentioned triple circulatory embryonic arrange- 

 ment ; thus, the material circulated by the notochord, 

 and distributed by it to the ossifying vertebrae, contains 

 ossific, and developmental, elements, which, on its func- 

 tional exhaustion, are turned into the pituitary organism 

 for disposal, and should find their way into the pharynx. 

 This material, on the advent of acromegaly, is dammed 

 back by, it may be, the disorganised pituitary excretionary 

 structures, and has to find its way, along the lines of least 

 resistance, leading from the site of excretionary arrest, 

 and, subsequently, and consequently, into the terminal 

 extensions of both the efferent, and afferent systemic 

 nervatures, where it produces the characteristic, osseous 

 and cutaneous, enlargements, the pituitary body being the 

 fons et origo of the whole sequence of morbid events, by 

 an unbroken continuity of occurrences. Moreover, the 

 reputed tendency, for bones which have been simul- 

 taneously fractured, and had their attached muscles 

 deprived of systemic innervation, to remain ununited, 

 is explained, by the incidence of, what we would designate, 

 the law of nutritive continuity between, nerve, muscle, 

 periosteum, and bone, having been violated in its nervine 

 links, or compartments. 



In comparison with the notochord, both in structure, 



